Ignore the faces: Neural characterisation of emotional inhibition from childhood to adulthood using MEG.

Marlee M Vandewouw,Charline M Urbain,Julie Sato,Benjamin A E Hunt,Kristina Safar,Margot J Taylor,Evdokia Anagnostou,Elizabeth W Pang

doi:10.1002/hbm.25651

Abstract

The ability to effectively and automatically regulate one's response to emotional information is a basic, fundamental skill for social functioning. The neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation processing have been assessed, however few investigations have leveraged neurophysiological techniques, particularly magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine the development of this critical ability. The current MEG study is the first to examine developmental changes in the neural mechanisms supporting automatic emotion regulation. We used an emotional go/no‐go task with happy and angry faces in a single‐site cohort of 97 healthy participants, 4–40 years of age. We found age‐related changes as a function of emotion and condition in brain regions key to emotion regulation, including the right inferior frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortices and primarily right‐lateralized temporal areas. Interaction effects, including an age by emotion and condition, were also found in the left angular gyrus, an area critical in emotion regulation and attention. Findings demonstrate protracted and nonlinear development, due to the adolescent group, of emotion regulation processing from child to adulthood, and highlight that age‐related differences in emotion regulation are modulated by emotional face type.

Highlights

The ability to regulate our emotions and respond to experiences with the appropriate emotion, intensity and duration is fundamental to successful social interactions (Gross, 2013)
Despite the importance of developing emotion regulation abilities over childhood and adolescence, there are few studies that have examined the neural underpinnings across these age groups (e.g., Lewis et al, 2006; Somerville, Hare, & Casey, 2011), and only a few that have looked at automatic emotion regulation
We found that adults activated this region more during inhibition compared to vigilance when viewing angry faces, consistent with a previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that found increased recruitment of the bilateral angular gyri during inhibition to aversive compared to neutral stimuli in adults (Brown et al, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

The ability to regulate our emotions and respond to experiences with the appropriate emotion, intensity and duration is fundamental to successful social interactions (Gross, 2013). During automatic emotion regulation (Mauss, Bunge, & Gross, 2007), emotional cues can be rapidly detected while simultaneously inhibiting potential responses to limit the impact of the emotional experience on one's ongoing activity (Koole, Webb, & Sheeran, 2015). For successful interpersonal social functioning, being able to effectively process emotional stimuli while simultaneously inhibiting one's response is a vital, acquired skill (De France & Hollenstein, 2019). Despite the importance of developing emotion regulation abilities over childhood and adolescence, there are few studies that have examined the neural underpinnings across these age groups (e.g., Lewis et al, 2006; Somerville, Hare, & Casey, 2011), and only a few that have looked at automatic emotion regulation

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